Feelings suck. I am a creature of logic and decisions—a scientist who thrives on facts, reason, and consistency. Emotion, by its very nature, is opposite of everything I function best on. Unstable, unpredictable, frustrating, and volatile—emotion is something I can’t control, and therefore it is something that frightens me. I think my biggest complaint with feelings and emotion is that they complicate decisions after I have carefully made them. Decisions are something I take very seriously, I make them after lots of thought, time, and preparation and I almost never go back on a decision after I finally make it. Emotions, on the other hand, jump in and try to bamboozle every logical thought I can come up with. It is extremely frustrating.
Fear, for example, usually results in one of two reactions—either I go into a frenzy of uncontrolled activity or I am virtually paralyzed into inactivity even when my path is set before me. It tangles my thoughts and blows up any challenges until that is all I can see. Fear is not something I can control. I know logically that fear is a vice—a burden even; but still I can’t seem to dump it when it enters my head. Like a parasite, it eats away at my determination and composure while tainting the world around me into something I cannot face with poise. I am a happy kid, but I am scared to death of a year of internships. I think it’s the huge unknown and the idea of leaving everyone and everything I have come to love about Spokane behind forever. This smallish fear soon mushrooms into something I don’t know how to handle. It opens an endless pit of what-ifs and why-nots and by the end I am a homeless old maid of eighty seven with no friends, no skills, and an unexplained fungal infection all over my left cheekbone. Bottom line—I hate being afraid.
Fear, however, isn’t the only emotion that drives me crazy, though I think it is certainly one of the worst. Guilt is another one that drives me a more than a little bit batty. Guilt is admittedly a good motivator, but it is also a festering acid that distorts my own view of myself. I think the worst part of guilt is that I sometimes have a nasty habit of imposing its cankerous presence without appropriate stimulus. I invite guilt when I haven’t done anything wrong which is stupid (yet another emotion I am far too familiar and disgusted with). This is especially true when others are involved. Even if I do my best to do everything logically and in the best way I know how I find myself full of guilt when those I care about are hurt, whether or not it is my fault. Again, I can often recognize that guilt is yet another unnecessary, unhelpful, and unwanted emotion, but I am yet to master the art of purging said emotion from my system. I can distract myself with music, scriptures, or homework, but guilt ekes back in like a toxin until I find some way to deal with it. Again, some guilt is both necessary and essential in helping me to be more of the person I hope to be someday, but all the same, I wish it was an emotion I can control and harness better to work for me instead of against me so stinking often.
Unfortunately, the list doesn’t end with fear and guilt. Sadness, homesickness, anger, frustration, inadequacy, and exhaustion are all emotions that get in my way and try to warble my reason. If I am being completely honest with myself I am a little nervous about attraction as well. Attraction, it may be argued, is not actually an emotion, but it is certainly a nasty force that usurps control in my otherwise carefully controlled mental system. Excitement and anxiety too, can alter my thought process, causing me to make decisions like writing on my blog instead of studying for my test or playing the piano like I had scheduled to do. Haha and that makes me feel shame—yet another abhorrent emotion.
I guess my point is that while I know logically emotions are a wonderful necessary part of the human experience, they are also annoying and I wish I had better control over them.
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